There Are 15 Days Until the Possible End of the Trump Era
Or the end of America as we knew it
If you had asked any disappointed Hillary Clinton voter on January 20, 2017, what they thought the country would look like on the eve of the 2020 election, I think they may have been surprised by the specifics, but not the scale, of the destruction of the country under President Donald Trump.
More than eight million confirmed Covid-19 cases and more than 220,000 dead—including 1 in 920 Black Americans. Our cities and schools half-shuttered. The goods trade deficit and federal budget deficit at record levels. Women dropping out of the workforce in droves. Students struggling to complete classes remotely, often without the strong home internet services this requires. Unemployment that spiked to the highest levels since the Great Depression. A mass wave of evictions on the horizon. Growing food insecurity. Elevated hate crimes. Our global reputation in tatters.
By any objective measure of the fundamentals—as election-watchers call the broad complex of general conditions at the time a campaign is held—Trump would be an unlikely candidate for winning reelection. The polls suggest this, too: Joe Biden has been beating Trump in head-to-head national matchups since 2017, and 2020 is looking more like 2018 than like 2016.
